


I know Places

by FakePlastikTrees



Category: Detachment (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 09:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakePlastikTrees/pseuds/FakePlastikTrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All I ever did was kiss you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I know Places

**Author's Note:**

> I watched this movie and this little snippet of story came to me. I really loved Christina Hendricks and Adrien Brody's chemistry together and it left me wanting a little more for their relationship, so this came about.

 

  
We are uncontrolled, surprising machines. We cannot be expected to behave a certain way, or to keep behaving in the same way for a long period time.

Grief is an especially complex emotion. It can be pure, unadulterated loss and then coping. A common cause and effect execution. But grief can also bring on a volcano of terrible realizations. Ghosts from our past may float back then, images and scenes that were dream like and foggy can become clear and startling.

After Henry’s grandfather died, he fell under the second category. He was lost and had inadvertently reverted to a child-like state, trying to figure out life and how to live it.

He had lived for thirty-seven years. And during that time, he’d been under the delusion that the mechanics of his body, his being and his spirit were functioning the way they were supposed to. The trauma of finding his mother naked and empty could not be undone. He never tried to or even remotely fix it. There was no fixing him as far as he was concerned.

All those crystal clear images that had appeared to him upon the death of his grandfather made him feel guilty, made him feel afraid of what he would become. Was he a monster as well? Did he even have a choice.

Sarah had looked at him accusingly. As if she knew--she judged him. And the image he possessed of her--that caring, almost maternal way of hers--had been severely damaged.

He disappeared on her, the way he did when people began to see him and the darkness he could not seem to escape.

But he was so concerned with the ‘what if’ that he failed to see the desperate way in which Sarah wanted to understand.

It was a month before she appeared on his doorstep with a bottle of wine and a supermarket pie she claimed to have only thought of a block from his apartment.

He questioned her, demanded to know how she’d found him. Why was she there and hadn’t he told her to leave him?

Her smile had faltered, her tin foil armor quickly peeling and slipping off with the prickling tone of his voice. “Please don’t push me away,” she’d pleaded and waited, unwavering under the weight of his stare. “I paid Lindsay in Administration fifty dollars for your address, the least you can do is eat the pie.”

“Why are you here?” He asked, his curiosity getting the best of him. Perhaps he was just tired of fighting his natural instincts to connect with another human being. Perhaps that honest to god darkness was in fact tiring with age.

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

“All I ever did was kiss you,” he’d said, as if it was a silly thing of her to do--think of him after only a kiss. But it was more than that. He knew it and he could see it in her eyes that she did as well. He showed her weakness that day in the classroom, he showed her vulnerability and that was more than he ever intended to show anyone.

“Don’t underestimate me. I don’t underestimate you.”

And it really was as simple as that, wasn’t it? She trusted him to be open and she demanded he’d allow her to understand him in return--give her the benefit of the doubt.

He let her into his shitty studio apartment and into his lumpy fold out bed. He had hoped he wouldn’t care to see her when it was over, but she had trembled in his arms and she had been warm and had sighed and moaned his name as if she had been waiting to do so the entire time.

Being inside her was the best he’d ever felt.

He had told her about his grandfather and about his mother, and about Erica and she hadn’t judged him anymore. She was naked and alive and so full of light, lain half on top of him, listening intently--he knew then that his initial instincts about her were true and he found himself holding her through the night to keep her from leaving.

He had always thought of himself as prepared, as a voyager rather than a lingerer, but Sarah made him linger. He planted his roots and made her his center and his window to the good parts of the world. He hadn’t intended on staying but he’d woven himself into her and for the first time in his thirty-seven years, he didn’t feel the unsettling feeling in his chest telling him to roam anymore.


End file.
